Bloodlines and Time-lines

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:26 pm

There has been a fair bit of speculation on how long this game takes to play in game time - not real time. Estimates go from one night, to several, to weeks, to months.

Curious, though. Between finding out about the Kuei-Jin in Santa Monica and killing him is at least one day, according to the Kuei-Jin's log. More to the point, however, is the Santa Monica parking garage. At the beginning of the game, it's entirely populated with functional vehicles. By the blood-hunt at the end, it's almost entirely populated with rusted out hulks. A completely abandoned vehicle takes months to rust out - longer if it's in an indoor facility like the Santa Monica garage. That suggests that this game plays out over *years* of game time.

I should have noticed this earlier, but it always got sequestered in the area of my brain reserved for, "that's a bit weird, but I'm busy now."

Thoughts?

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Sat Jun 11, 2005 11:58 pm

I always assumed at least one night per main quest. Most of the main quests could, I believe, be accomplished in a night. The majority of the other quests in the game aren't really that involved either. Only a handful, like wiping out the plaguebearers and upgrading the Nosferatu computer network, seem like they might require more than one night to complete.

Given how short most of the quests are, I just assumed the story took place over a couple of weeks. I never noticed the rusting of the vehicles in the Santa Montica garage, though. Does the passage of time leave any other discnerable signs in the game?

LaCroix · Post by **LaCroix** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 4:07 am

I thought they blew them up, if it rusted it woulded of lost its wheels would it?

jdougan1 · Post by **jdougan1** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 10:01 am

Venus (the club owner) is something of a clock. If you side with her, she pays you $250 every week. If you go back too early, no money, etc...

I didn't pay attention to it, but I was able to collect numerous times. That suggests a month or more of time *after* you get to downtown and complete her quests.

shana · Post by **shana** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 1:18 pm

Venus will pay you after you complete each main quest, but I don't know how that relates to time. I always thought it was a new day when the headline changed on the newspaper--maybe its a weekly or monthly publication.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Sun Jun 12, 2005 1:38 pm

[QUOTE=LaCroix]I thought they blew them up, if it rusted it woulded of lost its wheels would it?[/QUOTE]

Rubber rots like anything else, but I'm not sure if they would go faster than the metal - it seems unlikely. If they blew them up, they wouldn't be in neat rows like that, but if they set them on *fire*, now...

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 3:58 am

OK, new info, and it's not much. Time info is kind of scarce

The couple at the Ocean house arrive on May 30, 1958, and spend 6 days before the husband kills the wife.

45 years later, you save her soul.

Lily meets E. on April 15, 2003, and they spend 23 days together.

Lily goes for the bloodbank on May 8, 2003.

If you rescue her, you do so 76 weeks after she is captured, on or about October 23, 2004.

The Kuei-Jin take note of your presence on that day, and a day later, recognise you as a threat.

Futher information as it becomes available.

Celacena · Post by **Celacena** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 8:35 am

Venus

"come back in a few days" - so one can assume that the main quests are assumed to be spaced apart by a few days.

I thought the cars were burned out because otherwise the PC could drive away...

I'd reckon the game is supposed to take place over a couple of weeks or so.

some quests roll on from each other as in a film - say you watch "48 hours", "Commando" or "Glimmer Man" - you have heroes going from place to place over a relatively short period, but in Vamp, it feels slower than than overall, but with some rapid-fire episodes too.

LaCroix · Post by **LaCroix** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 12:14 pm

[QUOTE=yrthwyndandfyre]Rubber rots like anything else, but I'm not sure if they would go faster than the metal - it seems unlikely. If they blew them up, they wouldn't be in neat rows like that, but if they set them on *fire*, now...[/QUOTE]

how would the wheels rot inside a garage? how would the car rust anyway?

I still think it was blown up

Lestat · Post by **Lestat** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 12:33 pm

I have to agree with Celacena on this.

But since it is an event-triggered game rather than a time-critical game, I think it's fairly futile to try to pin it down. Venus is indeed the best indicator, but while I read somewhere that you can get money from her after every main quest, that is not my experience.

Dates given in side quests are only *atmospheric*, since most of them you can do whenever you feel like it. And since you can do them in any order, the designers cleverly put almost next to none time indicators in them to avoid temporal conflicts. So that leaves the main quests to determine duration.

If you count a night for every main quest (except the 3 or 4 last ones which would reasonably be done in the same night or you would be staked during your sleep), you end up with around 3 weeks. It might be more. But even counting 3 nights between every main quest (which is about the max on the Venus indicator), you end up with 2 months at most.

Anyway the game is full of little temporal inconsistencies (especially concerning the sidequests):
- You rush back to Imalia after the model citizen quest and guess what? In that extremely short period of time Tawni had the chance to make out with a llama, be caught & filmed, the result sent to the paper, the paper printed and delivered (they must have a night time edition), and picked up by an errant servant of the Nosferatu (since they themselves are still keeping their heads down) who clearly runs faster than you, because the paper is there, right next to Imalia.
- You can get the "A dish best served cold" as soon as right before you leave for the first time for hollywood (if you head first for your den), and solve it as late as right before you go look for Nines in the park... and all these nights the food critic is eating at the cafe? Is that the only place he has to evaluate? Can't he make up his mind?
- Hatter is supposed to meet with Julius the same night as you get the script from him, but you can do any number of quests in between and still meet Julius alone on the beach. Maybe Julius is really patient.
- The same thing with the Russian mobsters, they can spend quite some time waiting for Venus's money.
- Romero spends quite some time with his lady of negociable affection, I can't remember being able to enter his cabin once he started his coucholympics. I just hope no zombies got out.
- Kuei-Jin in Sta Monica: you can read his files and go out and come back any time later without him updating anything.
- And so on for every side quest.
- LaCroix usually asks you to execute his orders within the same night, but you can do any number of side quests before doing so.

Nah, if you start thinking too much about time in this game, it becomes absurd.

Hmm, just realised something: it must be less than two months. The date mentioned in the reports of the Quei-jin for your arrival is 23/10/2004 or so. If it took two months or more, then at some point, Xmas decorations should appear in town, no?

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 3:08 pm

Nah, if you start thinking too much about time in this game, it becomes absurd.

That holds true of nearly every video game RPG (I was going to list a few examples, but I don't want to make this post too long). If developers imposed time constraints on completing quests, espeically quests critical to the story line, many players would fail repeatedly until they finally figured out how to get the quest done. Such constraints would make the games more realistic, and you could argue that more realism means greater immersion. However, I believe taking it this far would make these games more frustrating than fun for a lot of people.

Speculating about the chronology of the game may be amusing, but it's ultimately futile. In games like this, time is irrelevant.

pennypincher · Post by **pennypincher** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 5:24 pm

It wouldn't have been TOO hard to make the important quests the only ones you could do when you collected them, allowing you to go do side quests right after or just before only... Then they could have slapped in a date or something each night... Ah well.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 6:15 pm

[QUOTE=LaCroix]how would the wheels rot inside a garage? how would the car rust anyway?

I still think it was blown up[/QUOTE]

Actually, I think they're *more* likely to rot in a garage. When my Daytona was new it used to spend 10 months of the year in storage, and the storage guy insisted on putting it on jacks to keep the tires off the floor precisely so they *wouldn't* rot. This is a guy who stores vehicles for a living, and if he was that worried about premium tires on a brand new sports car, I gotta figure he knew something that I didn't.

GravenWraith · Post by **GravenWraith** » Sun Jun 26, 2005 8:55 am

Firstly:
In hollywood, you get spotted by Samantha, and by her performance you would say she haven't seen u in say two or three months. doubt if it would be longer. Any thoughts on her behaviour? Pls answer.

Secondly, i feel time is not such a critical issue here. Since if it were, how can you run around in a certain area in what seems like an eternal night? It never becomes day.

jmima · Post by **jmima** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 7:05 am

Regarding samantha - she's says "everyone's been worried sick about you" - implying that vamp's been gone a fair amount of time. I always got the impression that it had been maybe a couple of months since the embrace. I just think her reaction wouldn't be so... enthusiastic and persistant if vamp had only been gone, say, a week.

Lestat · Post by **Lestat** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 8:29 am

It all depends on the type of social network your character would have I suppose, but more importantly: she might very well be mistaking you for someone else.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Mon Jun 27, 2005 5:58 pm

I've always been at least a bit curious about the game-time progression simply because of feat accomplishment. During the game you go from being Kine, to Kindred, to defeating an african Behemoth that is, by all accounts, some 800 years old. Initial guesses were that it occurs entirely within one night. A nice trick since you're dragged off to the trial at 4AM, and even in LA, I'm betting that dawn occurs around 5 or 6 AM more or less year-round.

I figure you've got about time for your trial, training run and to make it back to your haven before dawn on the *first day*. That suggests you meet Mercurio on the evening of the first day without so much as a hint that the day has passed, and I'm guessing you sleep in the bathroom to keep out of the sunlight. Further hints on the scatterbrained news suggest a time progression a lot faster than theorized here. I believe there is an excellent chance that several weeks have passed by the time you get to Hollywood, perhaps a couple of months by the time you get to Chinatown, and perhaps as little as half a year by the time the game is over, and that is being, in my humble opinion, conservative.

There are lots of times and places for daylight to happen without you noticing it. Anytime spent indoors, downstairs, underground, in a tomb, catacombs, or the sewers, etc. You get the idea. You don't necessarily have to sleep in the daytime. You just have to avoid sunburn.

On the other hand, it would probably be best to go with the temporal advice of one of our sage authors. With all the time discrepancies, worrying too much about it is probably wasted effort. Suffice it to say that it doesn't happen in one night, we don't know how long (barring further information), and 'nuff said.

Lestat · Post by **Lestat** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 2:45 am

More than a night, less than a year

(which is totally in keeping with dating in myths, legends & fairytales. And looking at what your character accomplishes, he is the stuff of legends)

Theoris · Post by **Theoris** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 7:11 pm

late comment

just an added comment (though late), since i live near the sea things seem to rust faster because of humidity and the fact that the salty air speeds the process. also the parking garage is near the peir where the sea spray gets to it. just a possible reason to the rust. oh and when i play the game it's often raining in santa monica.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 2:20 am

[QUOTE=Theoris]just an added comment (though late), since i live near the sea things seem to rust faster because of humidity and the fact that the salty air speeds the process. also the parking garage is near the peir where the sea spray gets to it. just a possible reason to the rust. oh and when i play the game it's often raining in santa monica.[/QUOTE]

I was just going to comment on that very thing:

[QUOTE=Lacroix]how would the wheels rot inside a garage? how would the car rust anyway?[/QUOTE]
Cars rust at a ferocious rate near the sea. Before the advent of undercoating, it was SOP to not buy a used car that had spent its life in Vancouver because it was almost certainly rusted out beyond repair underneath, as Theoris notes above. I had one of those cars, and had the shock mounts rip off the frame. My father refused to even try to fix it, and if my father couldn't fix it, it was *REALLY BAD*. He was a machinist, welder, fabricator, metalsmith, and mechanic. If it could be fixed, he could fix it. I've seen him refabricate a gear that was missing half the teeth back into a perfect gear at factory specification by building it up with a welder and machining it back down to spec.

[QUOTE=Celacena]I thought the cars were burned out because otherwise the PC could drive away...[/QUOTE]
Then they made a bad choice of cars to burn up, because Lily's Caddy is still there - the one car you actually have the keys for. Which begs the question, has anybody actually tried to *drive* it?